One of the curious memorials preserved in the British Foreign Office is the cancelled $15,000,000 check with which Great Britain paid the Alabama claims.  That the British should frame this memento of their great diplomatic defeat and hang it in the Foreign Office is an evidence of the fact that in statesmanship, as in less exalted matters, the English are excellent sports.  The real justification of the honour paid to this piece of paper, of course, is that the settlement of the Alabama claims by arbitration signalized a great forward step in international relations and did much to heal a century’s troubles between the United States and Great Britain.  Sir Edward Grey used frequently to call Page’s attention to this document.  It represented the amount of money, then considered large, which Great Britain had paid the United States for the depredations on American shipping for which she was responsible during the Civil War.

One day the two men were discussing certain detentions of American cargoes—­high-handed acts which, in Page’s opinion, were unwarranted.  Not infrequently, in the heat of discussion, Page would get up and pace the floor.  And on this occasion his body, as well as his mind, was in a state of activity.  Suddenly his eye was attracted by the framed Alabama check.  He leaned over, peered at it intensely, and then quickly turned to the Foreign Secretary: 

“If you don’t stop these seizures, Sir Edward, some day you’ll have your entire room papered with things like that!”

Not long afterward Sir Edward in his turn scored on Page.  The Ambassador called to present one of the many State Department notes.  The occasion was an embarrassing one, for the communication was written in the Department’s worst literary style.  It not infrequently happened that these notes, in the form in which Page received them, could not be presented to the British Government; they were so rasping and undiplomatic that Page feared that he would suffer the humiliation of having them returned, for there are certain things which no self-respecting Foreign Office will accept.  On such occasions it was the practice of the London Embassy to smooth down the language before handing the paper to the Foreign Secretary.  The present note was one of this kind; but Page, because of his friendly relations with Grey, decided to transmit the communication in its original shape.

Sir Edward glanced over the document, looked up, and remarked, with a twinkle in his eye,—­

“This reads as though they thought that they are still talking to George the Third.”

The roar of laughter that followed was something quite unprecedented amid the thick and dignified walls of the Foreign Office.

One of Page’s most delicious moments came, however, after the Ministry of Blockade had been formed, with Lord Robert Cecil in charge.  Lord Robert was high minded and conciliatory, but his knowledge of American history was evidently not without its lapses.  One day, in discussing the ill-feeling aroused in the United States by the seizure of American cargoes, Page remarked banteringly: